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The next time you see a picture of Yasser Arafat, take a look at his
keffiyeh, the black-and-white headdress he never appears without. He
wears it in an unusual style, carefully folded so that it comes to a
peak at the top, drapes down over his left shoulder, then tapers to a
point at the bottom.

Arafat's oddly-arranged keffiyeh is meant to resemble the map of
"Palestine" -- the Arab state whose creation is his all-consuming goal.
It is an emphatic symbol: Without uttering a word, Arafat conveys to
everyone who sees him that Palestine is always on his mind.

But look again. The shape of Arafat's keffiyeh doesn't correspond
with Palestine at all -- not if Palestine means the West Bank and Gaza
Strip, the territories Israel took from Jordan and Egypt during the
Six-Day War. What it resembles is the map of Israel -- the whole of
Israel, from the northern peak of the Galilee, down along the
Mediterranean coast, and from there to the southern tip at Eilat.

In short, the Palestine that is always on Arafat's mind is not an
Arab state that coexists with Israel, but an Arab state that takes the
place of Israel. The message conveyed by his keffiyeh is indeed
emphatic: It is a message of war without end.

The notion that Palestine equals all of Israel -- and that all of
Israel must be "liberated" to create a Palestinian Arab state -- is no
idiosyncracy on Arafat's part. It is an axiom of the Palestinian
movement, constantly repeated in its basic documents, its domestic
rhetoric, its educational curricula -- and its maps.
Visit www.fateh.net, the Web site of Al-Fatah, Arafat's faction of
the PLO, and the first image you see is the Fatah emblem: a map of
"Palestine" behind crossed guns and above a grenade. But the country
depicted is Israel, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. (On
the same Web site you can read the Fatah constitution, which says the
organization's goal is the "complete liberation of Palestine, and
eradication of Zionist . . . existence.")

Fatah isn't the only PLO faction whose emblem features a map of
Palestine that comprises all of Israel. Most of them do, including the
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Democratic Front for
the Liberation of Palestine, the Palestine Liberation Front, Al-Saika,
and the PLO itself. (You can see the PFLP logo at
www.pflp-palestine.org ).

There is nothing subtle about these symbols or their
Palestine-equals-Israel maps. They are calls for Israel's abolition.
With the signing of the Oslo peace accords -- which began with Arafat's
solemn pledge that "the PLO recognizes the right of the State of Israel
to exist in peace and security" -- all of them should have been
scrapped. And it should go without saying that maps depicting all of
Israel as Palestine ought to have no place at all in the Palestinian
Authority, the civil administration that now rules the Palestinian
people.

Sadly, they are ubiquitous.

Maps of "Palestine" on the walls of Arafat's offices -- occasionally
seen in news photos or television footage -- are actually maps of
Israel. Agencies of the Palestinian Authority use the shape of Israel
to denote Palestine in their emblems, stationery, and Web sites. Click
on www.mopa.gov.ps -- the cyber-home of Arafat's Ministry of
Parliamentary Affairs -- and a large map of Israel appears. The logo of
the Ministry of Industry is a stylized map of Israel drawn in the
Palestinian colors (www.industry.gov.ps). Smaller but unmistakable is
the map of Israel at the Ministry of Planning and International
Cooperation (www.mopic.gov.ps/aboutpales.htm). And the colorful "Map of
Palestine" offered by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics is,
in reality, a colorful map of Israel (see it at
www.pcbs.org/english/pal_map.htm).

It would take far more room than I have here to list all of the
Palestinian agencies, publications, organizations, and web sites in
which Palestine is shown as encompassing all of Israel. But at this
late date, is it really necessary to prove that Arafat's goal, and that
of his regime, is the liquidation of the Jewish state?

On the day he signed the first Oslo accord at the White House in
1993, Arafat told an interviewer that the agreement "will be a basis for
an independent Palestinian state in accordance with the Palestine
National Council resolution issued in 1974." He was referring to the
PLO's "phased plan," which was adopted in Cairo on June 9, 1974. It
calls for establishing a Palestinian state on any Israeli land that can
be acquired through negotiation, then using that territory as a forward
base for "liberating" the rest of Israel by force.

Arafat and the Palestinian Authority have never repudiated the
phased plan; on the contrary, they have reiterated it time and again.
"The Oslo accord was a preface for the Palestinian Authority," one of
Arafat's government ministers, Abdul Aziz Shaheen, said in 1998, "and
the Palestinian Authority will be a preface for the Palestinian state
which, in its turn, will be a preface for the liberation of the entire
Palestinian land."

Palestinians and Israelis will never know peace until Arafat and his
irredentist vision are expunged from Palestinian life. You will know
that has happened when the word "Israel" appears on Palestinian
maps.